Bruce Laingen: Time to Build Trust with Iran
[Bruce Laingen, a Bethesda resident, was chief of mission at the American Embassy in Tehran and a hostage during the 1979-81 hostage crisis.]
It is time, long overdue, to get serious about talking with Iran. Thirty years ago today, this country saw the end of its 444-day vigil with 53 Americans — I was one of them — who had been taken hostage Nov. 4, l979 by militant students in Iran.
Thirty years since that fateful day that saw, that morning, the end of the last formal dialogue with the Islamic Republic. Thirty years that mark the longest gap in relations with another country in the history of American diplomacy. All that with a country and a people with whom America once had a remarkably close and strategically productive relationship.
It is 30 years since I said to the senior hostage taker, Ahmed Azizi, while preparing to board an Algerian plane to freedom, that I looked forward to the day when his country and mine would again have a normal diplomatic relationship. (There was no audible response.)...
Read entire article at Baltimore Sun
It is time, long overdue, to get serious about talking with Iran. Thirty years ago today, this country saw the end of its 444-day vigil with 53 Americans — I was one of them — who had been taken hostage Nov. 4, l979 by militant students in Iran.
Thirty years since that fateful day that saw, that morning, the end of the last formal dialogue with the Islamic Republic. Thirty years that mark the longest gap in relations with another country in the history of American diplomacy. All that with a country and a people with whom America once had a remarkably close and strategically productive relationship.
It is 30 years since I said to the senior hostage taker, Ahmed Azizi, while preparing to board an Algerian plane to freedom, that I looked forward to the day when his country and mine would again have a normal diplomatic relationship. (There was no audible response.)...